To that point, the three protagonists are clearly struggling to make and find their varied ways, and I especially loved the devastating, savory/sweet interplay between the two creators. Similarly, as this is a crowdfunded web series, the overall story arc seem a bit rawer than it actually is, with at times MTA weekend construction schedule-like editing. But perhaps that’s intentional: what’s neat and pretty about New York anyway? Ultimately, it’s highly polished dramaturgically given how three-dimensional each character is left.

These small screenpost-mortems got me thinking about big screen milestones where our visibility was loud and proud, and advanced our cause with minimal irony and maximal reality—messy, empathic, and vivid. Almost from different epoques, two films, a mere 15 years apart—a gap that speaks volumes in our community, each made their mark in breezy yet profound ways.

Neither film anticipates the history we have witnessed over the past month, but instead each one “normalizes” us from within without stereotyping or whitewashing. In otherwords, except for the gender pairings, we’re just like the hets. But wait there’s more: in the midst of an imperfect world, something akin to tragedy even, we still make flawed, imperfect choices. Even and especially amongst ourselves, do we hurt one another the most, not because we’re victims or heros, or tainted or more extraordinary, but simply human.

Both films are populated with two successive generations of gay men in their 20s and 30s, each dealing with loss under different circumstances. The first romances New York amidst the HIV/AIDS plague, fighting it with the most effective weapons, irony and wit. The second romances West Hollywood—no mean feat that—with a gaggle of imperfect men (inside and out) struggling to find their way and striving but not quite grasping their precise goals until they lose what they have. Both films have upbeat albeit knowing conclusions, where the journey toward happiness is not self-aggrandizing or especially unique, but best taken with a solid pair of hiking boots, or a bunch of heels.

Imagine a disco, rave, or dance club, where or whenever, and now picture every–and I mean every–type of gay man out on that floor, married men with kids, bears/cubs, twinks, doms/subs, geeks, etc. Kind of an overweening mishmosh, right?

By widening their pool they only seemed to muddy it. Our conflicts can seem unique when in fact heteros have been there long before: secret shame of scandalous sex and identity, feeling like broken puzzle pieces that simply don’t fit together no matter what, emptiness of pursuing pleasure at expense of duty, family as a higher calling. So the pack/gaggle approach, staked somewhere between women’s and LGBT fiction and drama, has extreme limitations, purporting to include everyone, express a variety of points of view, and serves up a cafeteria/theme park variety of plot lines, and ultimately renigs on all counts.

Despite richly drawn and deeply played characters, we end up somewhere designed to accommodate the maximium number of people for the most time, absenting specific circumstances and characters with unique qualities and challenges. It’s laudable to think big, broad, and inclusive. But if the intention is supposed to be intimate, emotionally risky and evocative, then it’s only through specificity that universality can occur.

While the now last season of this series furthered the cause of gay male visibility on TV, its storylines expanded the characters’ conflicts and challenges significantly. Sex itself practically became a series regular, going from a Sebastian-like encounter at the start, through a bottom-mocking scenario, and finally passionate intimacy toward the close.

Augustin’s journey, which initially seemed a kind of blatantly inclusive stretch, was the most interesting, culminating in his literal breaking down the intimacy walls of a plus-sized poz guy. Dom, too, went to extremes, torn between his suitor’s independence-deflating help and a friendly payday that was ultimately a wash, all of course his P.O.V.

The series though lived and ultimately died by Patrick. There’s no question Jonathan Groff gave it his all, but the problem was the paltry choices given his character. Two diametric opposite directions for the rest of his life.

And yet it could not have been clearer with neon sign to boot: Richie is and will be “the one” for him. The Halloween scene was fun and painful, a blistering x-ray into just how un-self-loving Patrick has become. Which might explain his fusion with/repulsion to Kevin, himself a serial romantic. I had thought their first workplace connection might be a downlow thing, which could have interestingly twisted up the “Gay Guys in Apartment 3-G” premise. But instead due to the alternately moody and glacial pacing, the show clearly pitted Patrick’s self-dread against Richie’s selflessness, barrelling doubtlessly toward some major showdown.

It’s entirely possible the moment has passed where the need and success of an “all-gay” series exists. And yet from all that the producers have said, the hunger and yearning of so many gay men (this one included) to see our stories out there couldn’t be stronger. Terrific try, and better luck—to one and all—next time.

While I think overall this film deserves the praise that it’s gotten, it has a treacly pseudo-patriotric feel as if it were promoting LGBT inclusion in the armed forces. But instead of validating full and equal participation, it’s more as if directed toward our most cynical foes, saying almost blatantly, “Look how nearly normal these chaps are, they can even have sexless marriages!”

A major retraction from me to the makers of Looking, which after finally seen the first season, I get how exquisitely it moves gay male visibility forward on TV. Eclipsing the firsts of bothQueer as Folk versions, the show further nuances the cultural tightrope that gay men can occupy between physical contact and profound intimacy/love, often necessitating confrontations with painful truths.

While many linked Haigh’s breakout film to Richard Linklater, I felt Antonioni was more fitting and accurate. Silences, physical shifts, and bleakly beautiful landscapes form the aural and visual core of this series’ palette. Even more interesting is how a fully fleshed group of gay male friends develop well past coming out. And while a plethora of new shows feature gay men in various situations—work, family, school—they’re mostly colorful sidebars.

Less successful here are certain dramatic nuances which don’t fully land even if the choices made are clear and interesting. Richie was and is a wonderful foil and modifier for Patrick, but by the end felt a bit over the top because ultimately San Francisco is a very small place, and a West Side Story take might work better further south. The threat and temptation presented by Kevin to Patrick was intriguing at first but fizzled as the source of his passion never really surfaced—except as a workplace/power manipulation. The women characters fared the worst—unsurprisingly?—with Patrick’s mother starting off frosty with a nice touché reveal, but the fag hag nurse character ultimately was never much more than that.

Is this Haigh’s ploy, showing how unreliable and flimsy everyone around Patrick is, save his friends? And some friends they are. Agustin spent a season almost literally up his own ass because of his immense inadequacy and drove his boyfriend away, while Dom, nearly doing the opposite, hit 30 (yet the actor playing him is obviously 40ish??), and found his benefactor at a sex club who ultimately demonstrates infinitely more patience with him than he does with himself.

The overall quality is so high that the flaws, to me anyway, are that much more stark. I look forward to further examination come the new year.

Wesley Taylor‘s butt is a magical thing to behold. Making that observation, I instantly feel the portly, graying, eccentric sextegenarian that I am not (yet!) Fortunately for viewers (junkies?) of his deliciously sweet inebriant of a show (in tandem with his supersonically outrageous “playmate” Mitchell Jarvis), Taylor’s caboose is literally and delectably the marachino in an ecstatically entertaining concoction.

Their new season, a logical and welcome extension to the Best Coast wreaks equally (and inequally) yummy and justified havoc. Given the simply presented and moved on from homo-affection and sexuality of Season One, Taylor and Javris zanily spend a good deal of this season pushing back at their audience. Until as if driving along in one of our more rarified hoods, the show hit a jarring speed bump.

Which unfortunately prompts me to pull the emergency brake on this otherwise glowing tribute, as if Taylor had suddenly soiled and/or made a stink in his Aussie Bums. For his character, after implying (much less blatantly than Jonathan Tolin’s lovingly written one-man show for the lovely and talented Michael Urie) his being strung up into a Norma Desmond-like flytrap in season one, now goes whole hog, i.e. going down to better get to the top professionally. Once “there,” his co-star on (yet another) heteromalecentricviolence fest, where yelling, punching, and post-mortem sobs constitute emotional interaction, quickly picks up on the source of Taylor’s rapid rise, and confronts him with the homophobic “F” word.

Up until now, the sufferings of Taylor’s character, despite his best efforts to manage anything about his life, have been not only utterly endearing, but incredibly disasterous, without an ounce of victimhood or pity. But here, he and Jarvis try circumventing what feels like a dealbreaker and turn it into a sudden, bracing, and “homo” (as in man-to-man, but not gay) validation, somehow recalling the water glass duel between Shirley Maclaine and Anne Bancroft. I didn’t buy it, but I’m guessing the choices they think they had might have been few, given where they were coming from, and where they want to move on to.

It’s acceptable that Jarvis’s character ultimately pulls Taylor back, essentially, into the show, to this (to quote almost any character, especially Taylor) “mheh” place. As in, I’ll find whatever way I can to get a hold of season 3 soon after it’s aired (hopefully). But given the daring, the fun, and the “realness” they’ve built so far, I know they can, should and need to do a lot better. Get to work, boys . . .